Category: My Writing Life

Taking a bit of needed down time. Binging on Friday Night Lights episodes. Don’t forget to catch Rachel on the Smart Chicks Book Tour. Details in last post. 🙂

She’s the one sitting on the table in this video. heh heh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2isZmVmaA8

My very long, revealing and bumpy path to publication is up at The Deadline Dames today. 🙂

http://www.deadlinedames.com/?p=4547

Edit!!!!

You must check out the new book trailer for my critique partner’s new book! ALPHA comes out in a couple of weeks and FINALLY I’ll be able to talk to other readers about it. <g>

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjRJKmo61CA&feature=player_embedded]

Going to write today. The house could use some cleaning, but I don’t care. I feel like escaping deep into a fictional world of my creation. Feel like following the stream of light that takes me away from reality and let’s me experience excitement, challenge and maybe a little romance.

Three chapters (and a working synopsis) of Unnatural Selection are off to my agent. I have a few vivid scenes taking up brain space I’d like to write, but I want to wait for her reaction. It’s her first glimpse of the book. I’m both nervous and excited about it. My gut is telling me it’s good. My critique partner is telling me it’s good–once she reminded me of my little antecedent issue. (I know how they work, I just fight the system sometimes! <g> )

My agent will be the first to read US for story. She’s not there to critique it by line, she’s there to let me know if I’ve hit gold or not. So it’s nervy, yeah, but it’s also seriously cool.  If the response is good, I’ll lay the book out. If it needs work… well, I sort of get off on the challenge. I’d say that’s a sickness, but it makes me strive for better. 

Let me know what isn’t working and I’ll crawl into the story to find a better fit.

I’m leaning toward working on book two in my Norse trilogy. We’re waiting on a few responses to book one, so I’m still in limbo on the books, but I’ve sketched some exciting scenes I’d like to give a real run.  I’m thinking of slipping on the earphones and playing The Butterfly Effect–they make up a lot of Forecast’s soundtrack, but this was the song that gave me the characters’ relationship edge.

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzxbRqyphLo]

So, we named this cat Poe for several reasons. At the time, we couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl–it’s hard with long-haired cats and well, everyone deserves a bit of privacy.  Poe worked for a boy because I love the writer and it worked for a girl because I love the singer. Plus, he hid at first and we’d catch only glimpses of white fluff , like hints of a ghostly presence.

Poe was the perfect name.  He turned out to be male. And once he grew brave and ventured out… his reign of terror began.

He can’t resist the lure of pen and paper.

He sneaks up, stretching and looking as cute as he can before he…

Is possessed by the writer and goes for the pen!

But all he does is chew on the pen for a minute before passing out. (Me thinks the original Poe shouldn’t drink before he possesses my animal.)

And then, the ghost leaves and my Poe is all sweet and innocent again.

Until he wakes up.

Quick post here. Today’s my day at The Deadline Dames and we have a winner and new image up for our Readers on Deadline. This is a popular monthly feature of the Dames, so check it out. Who knows? You could get a book idea or two. Prize up this month is Dame Keri’s DESTINY KILLS!

Desire calls. Danger Lurks.
But…When Destiny McCree wakes up beside a dead man on an Oregon beach, she knows only this: she has to keep moving, keep searching, and keep one step ahead of the forces that have been pursuing her from the heart of Scotland to this isolated spot. Why? The death of her lover has left her alone, with little memory of her past. A glimmering serpent-shaped ring is the one clue she has—and a bargaining chip in a most dangerous game.

Enter Trae Wilson, a master thief with a sexy, knowing grin and a secret agenda of his own. Destiny and Trae both have powers far beyond the human—and both are running for their lives. Together they’re riding a tide of danger, magic, and lust…but with killers stalking their every move, they must use any means necessary, even each other, to survive—until the shocking secret of one woman’s destiny finally unravels.…

First official movie poster of THOR!

And um, an official movie photo of Thor that I’m compelled to share. <g>

My Thor in Forcast (Working Title of Book two in Norse YA Trilogy) is different–and quite a bit younger but something about this picture could sneak into my work. I mean, how could it not????

Yes, I gave you screaming girl in the last post. Sorry ’bout that. There are days when being on submission makes you feel a little like that and then there are days it feels more like the picture above. Like you have this glowing dream almost within reach.

Honestly, I’m still pretty excited about a couple of possibilities but working to not get my hopes up is a bit of a chore at times.  So, I’m focusing on other things. Now that the kiddo is back in school, I’m turning to the WIP. My critique partner read over the proposal for Unnatural Selection  and compared it to Minority Report and Robin Hood–which is TOTALLY cool in my book.

Don’t forget, the Deadline Dames are sharing stories about their paths to publication. These are great articles that show not everyone travels the same road. Because I’ve shared most of my path here, I’ll probably go ahead and put up the ROD. We had some excellent entries this last time, so the Dames are having a time picking the winner. Good times. 😉

The Deadline Dames are sharing paths to publication over the next two weeks. Mine may come later because the Readers on Deadline is my next post. May switch it up and do the ROD later instead, though. These are very interesting stories. Hope you enjoy them.

Sorry for the slow posts lately. I’ve been busy with back to school and some frustrating personal life issues. Still waiting to hear on a few important writing things–doing my best to deal with a bout of impatience that is um, kind of kicking my butt. 😉

So, even though Unnatural Selection (US) isn’t complete, I decided to go ahead and polish up the first three chapters to give to my agent. I did this with Foretold–back when it was called Wyrd, The Turning. Not only was that original title all wrong but Miriam let me know the style of book wasn’t cutting it either.

She was right.

I started from scratch and what that young adult became was sooo much better than the original idea.

I have a better feeling about US from the start. I think my ideas for the Scrap City novels feel pretty solid and so far, the feedback on snippets from book one have been excellent.

So, I polished up three chapters and uploaded them to the email loop I share with my critique partner, Rachel Vincent. (After you read this, check out all the foreign covers of her Soul Screamers books-I love them!) Even after working with Rachel for years, I still get a bit nervous about that first feedback. This is normal. Rachel’s published a lot of novels and she still has the same feelings when one of her babies comes to me. It’s the nature of the game. Rachel and I both have strong ideas about what makes a story good, so we inevitably end up making sense to each other. And when I get a solid thumbs up, I know I pulled something off.

In other news, I’ve been trying out Liquid Story Binder  again for this book. I really like it so far and will probably buy it soon. I absolutely love the more creative setup. I use the image and dossier options a lot. In fact, here is a sneak peek of my second, big monitor. I have this plugged into my laptop so I can keep the images of both characters and scenes up. I put little Post-its all over the images because I don’t own rights to post them–these are my private use only images.  (If these books sell, I’ll be looking into purchasing the images of Rae for a website. The model is just too perfect for her.) 

 

The dossier is in the bottom left corner. I’m using that image in a scene and I jotted down lines to remember when I get there.  I’m a visual writer and so far, Liquid Story Binder is proving to soothe that side of me. Big time. 🙂

Thought I’d try out audio books and what better time than now? Why you ask? The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is offered as a free download this week. I’ve wanted to read this book for some time.

http://www.audiobookcommunity.com/page/sync-link

You do have to sign up and download their software, but I’ve been curious about audio books for a little while. And if I like, I’ll buy more books.

So, I downloaded the software and have already loaded the book onto my iPod. Who knows? This could make me work out longer. <g>

BTW, I haven’t been updating my Livejournal site. There was a bug in the program and it hit several authors, so I’m being cautious. It tried to do a download on my computer the last time I signed in, so be careful!